Well, I picked up Rift a few days ago at the behest of my brothers (who said that I owed them money anyways for a fathers day gift that we all chipped in for).

So anyways, here are my thoughts on the game after reaching level 17 (the max is 50):

This game is a WoW clone. Yes, if you say this to other RIFT players they will get indignant about it. But if someone actually slows down and looks at the game, they will see that everything is the same.

Here, a picture is worth a thousand words:
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See the similarities?

In fact, if I had to guess, I would say that Rift is Trion's version of WoW. They are essentially saying: "this is what we would do if we were in charge of WoW. This is how we would fix things and make them different."

On that note, there are two main differences between Rift and WoW:

Souls/Talents: In WoW, you have 9 classes with 3 talent trees each (so call it 27 different mini-classes). In Rift, you have 4 classes with 9 talent trees (called "souls"). Similar to WoW, each talent tree has it's own playing style. However, the differences between talent trees in WoW are drastic, while in Rift they can be more subtle.

For example, in Rift the Mage class has 4 offensive "souls": Elementalist, Pyromancer, Necromancer and Warlock. Elementalists and Necromancers both have pets, but the elementalist focuses more on using multiple elemental damage types while the necromancer focuses more on anti heals. The pyromancer focuses mainly on fire based direct damage burst DPS. The warlock focuses on HP stealing and HP sacrificing abilities. The Pyromancer and the elementalist have an overlap on direct damage type spells, the elementalist and necromancer have overlap on pets and the necromancer and warlock have overlap on spells with HP drains.

The other main difference between WoW and Rift, is that Rift has various world events that happen. "Rifts" will randomly appear in the world, spawning powerful enemies. Each rift has multiple stages that you must complete in order to close/destroy it. After destroying the rift, you receive various rewards, along with a special currency which can be spent on equipment. These rifts can spawn "invasions", which will send powerful enemies against cities. If a high level invasion is left unattended, it could kill quest givers, healers, trainers and vendors. Wiping out an invasion will also give you rewards like a rift will.

Normally, these would impede gameplay and be an annoyance. These encounters are difficult to do on your own, and trying to set up a PUG is a pain. However, this is where Rift REALLY shines: if more than one person is near a rift, a button appears at the top of your screen which says "Join Public Group". You will automatically form a group with the other player(s). Plus, the rifts are marked on your map, and will inevitably draw attention from other players. This process is seamless, intuitive and simple. And if there are multiple public groups in the same area, the group leaders have a button at the top of the screen to "Merge Public Groups" - automatically forming a raid of multiple groups.

Now, occasionally you have major world events. During one of these events all hell breaks loose as dozens of rifts open up across the zone, each one spawning invasions which take a beeline to the nearest city. This puts everyone in danger. On top of this, every player in the zone is automatically given a quest to protect the cities and close the rifts. If all of the rifts are closed without losing all of the wardstones in the various cities/encampments, then a raid boss spawns. If the raid boss is killed, then everyone gets a significant reward.

This is the main reason why I have fallen in love with this game. Never before have I played an MMO which actually encourages you to group with random strangers who just happen to be around. As opposed to WoW where people only group with random strangers when they want to run an instance.

However, despite this, Rift is very clearly underdeveloped. The music is mediocre at best, the gameplay isn't perfectly balanced (though nobody has figured out what the FOTM is, so this isn't must of an issue yet) and things don't seem completely fleshed out yet. To be frank, it lacks that special "polish" that Blizzard is famous for, that makes a game look finished and complete.

But the developer of this MMO, Trion, is also the publisher. This reminds me of my other addiction: EVE Online which is both developed and published by CCP. EVE Online is one of the oldest MMOs which is still financially successful and continues to grow year after year (albeit slowly). The lack of a third party publishing the game (and also at the same time seizing intellectual property ownership over the game) is one of the reasons attributed to EVE Online's long life. I hope that Trion will also follow a similar path and go for a slow and steady growth that continually builds over time - never dying and always improving.

I have a 50 Assassin/Bard (main roles) and though I liked the game at first it quickly became tedious and redudant.

PROS

Aoe Looting - (Im hoping this spreads to other games and becomes a standard)
Initial Exploration - (One of the few games where if you successfully bunny hop up a mountain 9/10 there is actually something up there)
Intuitive class system with a possibility of many combinations - (Though keep in mind this might make balancing impossible)
Guild Quests - (Though right now they can be done in a day with a guild only containing 10 people, there is something there)

CONS

Kill and Collection Quests - (oh my lord thats about all there is, all the way to 50, sometimes ur sent out to kill basically the same thing you just did)
BUGS BUGS BUGS - (They are EVERYWHERE, though at least they do give an accessible way to report them)
Lackluster PvP - (Like most other parts of the game that involve groups it is just a zerg half the time with fotm type chars *right now its sabatouers btw* dominating)
Rifts - (if you have done one, you have done them all and they just start to get annoying, especially when they spawn right next to a quest hub and your alone)

In a nutshell if you are a hardcore gamer you will blow through all of their content really fast (you can hit 50 in 4 days if you just run dungs over and over, or so im told) and if you arent hardcore then maybe it will be fun for awhile, but only until you realize its the same thing over and over again and basically a wow clone that isnt done nearly as well, they just dont offer the amount of content (yet) that one has come to expect these days. The game has potential but seems a little behind its time. Warhammer and Aion held my attention longer than this game did. Just my opinion,

O thanks for the info, i was wondering about this game. Btw pretty much all mmo's are the same in the end. They are either a grind feast like final fantasy or you can lvl up in a short amount of time such as wow for example. Ive played everything from ultima online, guild wars, runescape, ff, wow, aion, heroes, swg, asheros call and everquest 1&2 in the end they are all the same. I've played wow,and ff the longest out of all of them.

Ive been playing this game since Beta 1 , and love this game , while it has lost some of its omg factor ppl like this who say its just a wow clone make me wanna punch someone... WOW WAS NOT the first MMO nor was it an original MMO, 90% of all its content early on was stolen from Warhammer and a lot of other games and mmo's out there.

Rift is a fantasy MMO , thus it will have a lot of similarities to wow. A lot of other mmo's had talent tree's so again wow wasnt the first..
while in WoW you have 3 trees and ur stuck w/ those 3 trees no matter what. u have put all ur points into 1 b4 you can go into a second. You also dont start earning points to put into ur talent tree till lvl 10 in wow.

Rift from lvl 2 onwards u get points to spend, you get 3 diff roles to pick as you progress on what you want your char to be , and later you can unlock the rest of ur souls. Which then opens the door up to even more customization.

Idk what the guy saying there was a lot of bugs , cause there isn't.. you must be seeing things cause there really isnt. it has been a SOLID mmo since day 1 of its beta release. far more then i can say of wow. In rift you dont have them taking the servers down for 5-6-7 hrs at a time and never updating on what is going on.

TRION is a good solid mmo company whom cares about its fan base and listens to them , again far more then i can say about Blizzard.

Your lvl 17 , you have hardly scratched the surface of the game. to make a fair judgment of the game.

EVERY MMO quests have you go to point a kill x amount of things and come back to turn in. this is no different in wow nor in Aion or in Rift , so idk why u complaining about that. Its fairly easy to get into this game the learning curve isnt hard to adapt to..

and wow's pvp is just half the time zerg feast , Ive played wow since about its launch and now been playing Rift and i like rift a lot better.

and half your post contradicts its self.

Rift is a solid game not for everyone , they dont cater to the lazy ppl like wow and how is has just constatly been dumbing the game down more and more..

Rift has been out for little over 30 days now , and they have already been hard at work implementing additional content (end game) far better then AION ever did.

you just make my head hurt lol.. im sorry , wow has been out for well over 6 years and had a lot of time to adjust things. rift is decently balanced far more then WoW is.

Wow tends to go to the extreme's totally gimping your toon , to making your toon SOO OP , you dont see that in rift at all.

I have a 50 and have done the end game content and its still fun for me.

If you want a solid mmo , that doesn't have graphics taht look like it was drawn by a 12 year old , want a company that listens to what the customers have to say , want a mmo that is imo quite a few steps ahead of wow , then Rift is the game for you.

I've played wow since vannilla, and truth be told RIFT feels like the BC era of WoW. Not nessecarily a bad thing, BC was probably wows golden period (Blizz basically coasted through WotLK, and Cata spent to much design time on newbie areas, hoping for a flood of new players that has yet to appear).

Rift was hoping to be a game similar enough to wow to be an easy switch, yet different enough to attract some of the people who were tired of the same old same old with wow. The first part was a home run, the second part, well not so much. It just didn't feel diffrent enough for me to not get sick of the same things that I was sick of in wow (grinding, kill x of y, etc.).